Future ‘Battlegrounds’ for Habitat Conservation Very Different to Those in Past

In the face of impending global change, some regions are more in
need of protected lands than others. The map shows regions color-ranked
by how much area is projected to change by 2100 in relation to how much
area is currently protected (“Conservation Risk”). Many of the
tropical, but not temperate regions with greatest risk (red) are also
of highest conservation value as indicated by their higher number of
globally unique amphibians, birds, mammals and reptiles. (Credit: Image
courtesy of University of California - San Diego)
(Click image to enlarge)

March 2, 2008 — Biologists at the University
of California, San Diego have developed a series of global maps that
show where projected habitat loss and climate change are expected to
drive the need for future reserves to prevent biodiversity loss.

Their study, published online February 28 in the journal Proceedings
of the Royal Society B, provides a guide for conservationists of the
areas of our planet where conservation investments would have the most
impact in the future to limit extinctions and damage to ecosystems due
to rapid human-driven climate and land-use change.

The researchers found that many of the regions that face the
greatest habitat change in relation to the amount of land currently
protected —such as Indonesia and Madagascar—are in globally threatened
and endemic species-rich, developing tropical nations that have the
fewest resources for conservation. Conversely, many of the temperate
regions of the planet with an already expansive network of reserves are
in countries—such as Austria, Germany and Switzerland—with the greatest
financial resources for conservation efforts, but comparatively less
biodiversity under threat.

“There’s a huge discrepancy between where the world’s conservation
resources are concentrated and where the greatest threats to
biodiversity are projected to come from future global change,” said
Walter Jetz, an assistant professor of biological sciences at UC San
Diego, who headed the study. “The developed nations are where the
world’s wealth is concentrated, but they are not the future
battlegrounds for conservation.”

“While many details still have to be worked out, our study is a
first baseline attempt on a global scale to quantitatively demonstrate
the urgent need to plan reserves and other conservation efforts in view
of future global change impacts,” he added. “Reserves have often been
set up haphazardly, following some national goal, such as to preserve
10 percent of a country’s area, or in response to past threats. But
little consideration has been given to the actual geography of future
threats in relation to biodiversity. Yet it’s those future threats that
expose biodiversity to extinction.”

To conduct their study, the researchers examined the impact of
climate and land use changes on networks of biological reserves around
the world and contrasted them to four projections of future global
warming, agricultural expansion and human population growth from the
global Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. They discovered that past human
impacts on the land poorly predicted the future impacts of climate
change, revealing the inadequacy of current global conservation plans.

“The past can only guide you so much in the future,” said Tien Ming
Lee, a graduate student and the first author of the study. “This is why
we may have to change our future conservation priorities if we want to
be effective in conserving biodiversity in the long run.”

Lee said the study also confirmed the longstanding argument that
wealthy countries with few threats to future biodiversity loss would do
better to spent their conservation dollars on underdeveloped countries
with greater threats of future extinctions than in their own backyards.

“Tropical countries are currently sitting on vast tracts of forests
that are substantial carbon sinks and if they can get adequate
financial help to protect these habitats, both global climate change
and biodiversity loss could be mitigated,” he said.

Funding for the study was provided by the National Science Foundation.